Skip to main content

Akali Dal's rejected leadership should vacate space for new leadership in interest of Panth and Panjab

 


Revival of Shiromani Akali Dal difficult without major surgery despite reverting to Panth

Ground Zero

 

Jagtar Singh

 

It must be appreciated that the humiliating and crushing defeat in February 2022 Assembly election has failed to demoralise or dishearten Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal.

He is already on way to reinvigorate the party rank and file going by his address at the “Panthic Conference” on Baisakhi today at Takht Damdama Sahib, Talwandi Sabo in Bathinda district.

The ground for his speech was earlier prepared by Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee president Harjinder Singh Dhami who tried unconvincingly to revive the narrative of the Shiromani Akali Dal being synonymous with the Panth. He conveniently overlooked the fact that the Akali Dal, since 1997, has conveniently been stream-rolling the Panthic traditions, especially when in power.

Moreover, the party had opted for voluntary shift from Panth to Punjabiat at its 75th anniversary conference at Moga in February 1996.

But then the presidents of this supposed to be the mini-Parliament of the Sikhs have not been the mass leaders like Jathedar Gurcharan Singh Tohra who was the last stalwart who headed this body. Of course, Dhami is trying to revive the same spirit in SGPC as he himself was associated with Tohra.

The basic issue here whether the Akali Dal can be recharged by just advancing the argument that the defeat was nothing unusual and that people fell to the misleading propaganda against the party by the opponents.

What must be realised that the Sikhs this time have not just defeated the Akali Dal but have rejected it in the present form and content.

Sukhbir Singh Badal today did not give  any hint that any major change would be introduced to revive the party.

The party needs major surgery, not just cosmetic face-lift.

The Bargari tragedy negates every value that an Akali Dal government should stand for.

Even when out of power, Faqr-e-Qaum Panth Rattan, 5-time chief minister and Shiromani Akali Dal patron had sharply attacked the Morcha that was launched on June 1, 2018 under the leadership of former MP Dhian Singh Mand seeking justice in all the cases associated with Bargari sacrilege tragedy, the narrative that has started on June 1, 2015 from Burj village near Bargari.

Sukhbir appointed two committees to go into the defeat but these committees include all those who had been part of the mismanagement over the years.

Both the Akal Takht and the SGPC as institutions stand dented over the years by vested political interests.

The Akali Dal just can’t be revived by counting on the likely weaknesses of the AAP government in the state.

It seems the leadership (Read House of Badals) is not prepared to accept the naked truth.

The leadership first must admit that blunders were committed over the years, both consciously and unconsciously, that led to the dilution of Panthic tone and tenor of the Shiromani Akali Dal. The party has been under single line of command since 1996.

The party is now virtually a group of families and some business interests controlling it that has nothing to do with Panth, Punjab and the people.

This is the party that for years was the voice of the Panth and Punjab and functioned as a completely democratic body. Sikh religion, after all, represented democratic ethos.

Interestingly, the SGPC recently installed portraits of martyrs Gurjit Singh and Krishan Bhagwan Singh in the Central Sikh Museum in the Darbar Sahib (Golden Temple) complex. Both of them were killed in police firing at Behbal Kalan while protesting against sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib at Bargari in October 2015. Punjab was then ruled by the Akali Dal government headed by Parkash Singh Badal.

If Gurjit Singh and Krishan Bhagwan Singh are martyrs, then it should also be brought on record as to which regime killed them. The inscription with these portraits should mention that they were martyred by the Akali Dal government headed by Panth Rattan Parkash Singh Badal for the posterity to know.

Merely installing their portraits in the museum would not serve any purpose as the  guilty too should be punished.

It is in this backdrop that the Akali Dal needs major surgery for revival.

However, no signal is available indicating that the present leadership is willing to learn and start the rectification process in the interests of the Panth and Punjab.

The present leadership needs to get aside to vacate space for new blood.

Nature has its own way of filling up the vacuum.

 

 

 

 

 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sinister and deep design to divide Sikhs and Hindus in Canada needs to be exposed

  Sinister and deep design to divide Sikhs and Hindus in Canada needs to be exposed Ground Zero Jagtar Singh Chandigarh: Let us decode deeper design in what apparently seems to be deliberate distortion of facts in case of the so-called Sikh-Hindu clash in Canada to project it as confrontation between the two communities. The Indian media and the establishment gave it out as a communal conflict and attack on a Mandir, the Hindu place of worship. Let us first put the matter straight from the evidence available in the form of videos relating to every dimension of this narrative and the statements. It was neither a Sikh-Hindu clash nor an attack on the Hindu temple per se. It was a protest by the SFJ activists against the Indian consulate organizing a camp there. Such protests have been held against the consulate outside the gurdwaras too as per the record. The saner statement issued by the Hindu Federation of November 4 is very important in the interpretation of this narra...
Post a Comment
Read more

History seems to be ominously repeating itself to drive Punjab into religio-political minefield again

  History ominously repeating itself to drive Punjab into religio-political minefield again Ground Zero Jagtar Singh This headline is not rooted in some sort of pessimism. The signals are loud and clear. The onus to counter such signals is on the Punjab government. History in Punjab seems to be repeating itself to push Punjab into yet another cycle of what can be termed as the avoidable toxic situation. That cycle has now impacted even geo-political relations of India with some countries, especially Canada where the Sikhs are settled in sizeable numbers. In the context of the Sikhs as a globalized people, it is pertinent to mention that even in United Kingdom House of Commons, the representation of the Sikhs is now in double digit after the recent elections. Punjab is still impacted by the tremors of religio-political   dynamics that got triggered in 1978 with the Sikh-Nirankari clash on the Baisakhi on April 13 at Amritsar, the religious capital of the Sikhs. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Two binaries emerging in Punjab’s multi-polar polls where last 72 hours are always crucial

  Two binaries emerging in Punjab’s multi-polar polls where last 72 hours are always crucial   Ground Zero Jagtar Singh Chandigarh, May 28: The inter-play of socio-political forces in Punjab in the run up to the June 1 Lok Sabha elections is unprecedented. This is besides that established fact that the religio-political dynamics of this state has always been different from the rest of India, even when the boundaries of this country touched the Khyber Pass connecting with Afghanistan. It is for the first time that so many main political players are in the fray independently thereby making the contest multi-polar. Then there are two other eruptions in the electoral matrix making the multi-polar contest all the more interesting, and also important for future dynamics of not only Punjab but also India as the roots of this phenomena are not in too distant a past but in not so recent period of militancy. It is after decades that Punjab is going to the polls without a...
Post a Comment
Read more